Bethesda,
MD - September 28, 2004 - Futron
Corporation announced today that it is making its groundbreaking
Space Tourism Market Study, the most comprehensive survey
of customer demand for suborbital and orbital space tourism
to date, available to the public at no charge.

The Space Tourism Market Study, originally published two years
ago, is based on a Zogby International poll of affluent Americans
commissioned by Futron in 2002. The poll gauged the level
of interest in, and willingness to pay for, space tourism
experiences among those people with the means to afford such
flights. Futron used the poll results to generate a 20-year
forecast for consumer demand for orbital and suborbital space
tourism flights.

"Futron worked very hard over the course of several months
to objectively and accurately analyze the space tourism market,"
said Phil McAlister, Director of Futron's Space & Telecommunications
Division. "We hope that our efforts, as captured in this report,
will benefit the many people interested in this promising
market."

Highlights of the Space Tourism Market Study include:

"
The overall space tourism market is very promising, and
could generate revenues in excess of $1 billion per year
by 2021;

"
Suborbital space tourism will generate the largest demand,
with the potential for 15,000 passengers and $700 million
in revenues per year by 2021;

"
Orbital space tourism, while growing more slowly than its
suborbital counterpart, will still have up to 60 passengers
and $300 million in revenues per year by 2021;

"
Those interested in suborbital space tourism are demographically
distinct from those interested in orbital tourism.

Tuesday
September 28, 2004: 7-8:15pm Pacific Time - the Space Show
features "the return of Jim Benson, Founding Chairman
and Chief Executive of SpaceDev,
a publicly traded space development and exploration company.
SpaceDev specializes in affordable, high-performance small
satellites and safe, affordable hybrid-based rocket motor
propulsion systems. ..."

Wednesday,
Sept. 29, 2004 special live coverage of the Space Ship One
X-Prize flight in Mojave, CA begins at 6AM. [See links at
top of the RLV
News page.]

Sunday
October 3, 2004, 12:00-1:30 PM Pacific Time - the Space Show
"features Adriano Autino, prolific science and space
writer/lecturer for leading magazines, journals, and space
advocate organizations, as well as Italian entrepreneur, making
software and tools for aerospace and infrastructure. As an
'astronautic-humanist', he is the author of many original
concepts for space age philosophy..."

The conference will begin with an all day session Friday co-hosted
by the Space Access Society and featuring Alternative Space
transportation firms, from grass roots X-Prize contenders
to multi-million dollar launch companies. The day will be
punctuated by a luncheon panel of financiers and investors
who will discuss the ins and outs of money issues relating
to space companies.

Saturday's program includes a showcase of alternative space
firms building space hotels and other new space businesses,
to a discussion of Hollywood and media in space, to talks
on how you can get into space yourself, and the big picture
of where this is all leading – the human settlement of space.

Saturday evening the Foundation will hold its annual awards
banquet. A gala affair will honor those who have made real
breakthroughs in the opening of space, presented a compelling
future in the media and the people who have worked each day
to make a difference. Sunday sessions will focus on leading
edge ideas and culminate in a town hall meeting and workshop
on how to expand and accelerate this important movement.

Following within days of Burt Rutan and other X-Prize flights,
this conference is the place to be to hear the inside stories,
meet the movers and hear about what is coming next on the
space frontier!

The rooms in the block reserved for the Space Frontier Conference
rate of $129 per night on the RMS Queen Mary are Outside Staterooms,
usually $240 per weekend night. If you plan to stay on the
ship you need to register ASAP. To get our special conference
rate you need to call 800-437-2934 or 562-435-3511. Registrations
made online will NOT be eligible for our reduced conference
rate.

Big
news day in commercial space ...
See RLV
News for the latest news on the announcement by Richard
Branson on the development of Virgin Galactic space tourism
company and on Bigelow Aerospace's sponsorship of the American
Space Prize to spur development of low cost orbital transport.

Weightless
fun ...
See the video
of John Carmack and his Armadillo Aerospace crew experiencing
a ZERO-G
flight.

Maintaining
communications with the vehicle is the bigger challenge (especially
if the vehicle loses its attitude control temporarily and can't
point its high-gain antenna at the earth.)

The
P5-A would be an orbiter. The German
Mars Society has proposed that it carry an additional craft
that would release a balloon
that would provide descend into the atmosphere and transmit
back various measurements.

Over the
weekend there was a news conference by the German Mars Society
that present results of studies of the proposal and possible
techniques to use for a 2009 launch:

Today
on a press conference in Bochum, Germany, the private financed
Mars balloon mission P-5A/ARCHIMEDES was presented. The huge
press coverage exceeded every expectation. All newspapers
and magazines, TV and radio stations covered this visionary
idea. Especially articles in business newspapers like Handelsblatt
will help rise the needed funding.

The AMSAT P5-A is destined to enter an orbit around the planet
Mars. This spacecraft will then transmit scientific data to
Earth – data from experiments on-board P5A as well as - via
its repeater function - from the ARCHIMEDES balloon. This
probe will also take with ARCHIMEDES on its way to Mars after
launch with Ariane 5 where it is released and enters atmosphere.

Extensive studies conducted throughout the past years have
indicated that both the concept of inflating the balloon during
descent as well as the concept of inflating the balloon from
the ground poses immense technical hurdles that need to be
overcome. Both result in extremely complex spacecraft designs
and mission sequences that cannot be realized by the project
Archimedes team, if the proposed launch window of 2009 is
to be used. Hence, a different concept has been developed,
whereby the balloon is to be inflated out in space while approaching
the planet, and subsequently used as a hypersonic drag device
to slow the vehicle down enough for descent to its operating
altitude. This way, the ARCHIMEDES mission will also demonstrate
the technology for inflatable atmospheric drag devices on
Mars. It provides room for the significant technology experiment
COMPARE, the scope of which is to gather crucial hypersonic
flow data during entry of a large body into the Martian atmosphere.
This data will be invaluable to future heavy landers and aero-assisted
manśuvres. It also provides the unique opportunity to measure
the density profiles of the upper layers of the atmosphere
with accelerometers due to the spacecraft's very low ballistic
coefficient.

In addition to the aforementioned baseline mission scenario,
two other scenarios are currently considered. The first option
would be to target mission duration of one sol. This would
drop the requirement for night time survival, and thus also
reduces the requirements for power and thermal control. Since
the mission could be flown with primary batteries only, solar
cells would not be needed, and the suspension bridle also
becomes unnecessary. Most important, however, less internal
overpressure would be required, since the balloon would be
allowed to sack at night, and hence the floatation gas could
cool and contract below ambient pressure. But this in turn
lowers the skin load when the floatation gas pressure rises
upon entry heating. It should be noted here that all mission
requirements including the demonstration of sustained floatation
in the Martian atmosphere would be fulfilled by this option,
albeit being less desirable due to the short mission lifetime.

The second option would go even further and allow the balloon
to descent directly to the ground, a scenario referred to
as the "Direct To Ground Scenario" (DTG). In addition to the
first option, this option would employ a simpler, more common
and more robust, yet also heavier balloon skin material which
is not able to sustain floatation but causes the mission to
descent during a prolonged period of about two hours (as compared
to classic entry bodies that travel through the atmosphere
all the way to the ground within a few
minutes).

Starting
from September 29, 2004, this lecture is part of Center of
Excellence (COE) Program. In contrast to “Space Tourism I”
lecture, the goal is to discuss selected topics such as “Ansari
X Prize”, “Space Adventures”, “Tourist Module on ISS” etc.
in detail. The lecture is complemented by various guest speakers
from universities and industries as well as using the Space
Tourism Market Simulation II. This is a master course, but
bachelor's or Ph.D. students are also welcome. Transfer of
credits to other universities on request. Visitors are always
welcome!

He will
be posting the lecture notes as the course progresses. He also
says that the course is available on the "internet via
webcam and microphone."

Zero-G-oy
experiences...
John Carmack has posted the following testimony on a couple
of newsgroups so I don't think he'll mind if I reprint it here:

Since
I got involved with the X-Prize,
Peter Diamandis has been talking to me about his other project,
http://www.nogravity.com/.
Like most people, he was hitting me up to invest in his company,
but I said that I would rather be a customer than an investor
(where possible, this is a better way to support companies).
It took two years for it to go from "We are going to be starting
flights in a couple months!" to actually getting the airplane
to Dallas, but today I took all of the Armadillo crew and
some of my partners from Id Software up on a chartered flight,
"beta testing" the experience.

It was
awesome!

We had
14 people, so it was only a little over half the full capacity,
giving us plenty of room to bounce around. Doing the martian
(1/3) and lunar (1/6) gravity parabolas is a really good idea,
as it lets people get a little used to the movement before
completely floating around. Many people thought the lunar
gravity parabolas were the best part.

We did
a total of 17 parabolas, the normal 15 and two extras at the
end. At least half the people thought that was plenty (or
two too many), but a bunch of us were like "Ten more parabolas!"

Nobody
puked, although we did have one person staring solemnly at
his barf bag at one point, and a few people had to go sit
down for a bit. They gave recommendations for prescription
medication that a couple people went and got filled, but the
rest of us just took over the counter dramamine pills that
they provided. One of the crew mentioned a promotional flight
they had recently flown with a bunch of unmedicated journalists
that had been hitting the cocktail bar, resulting in fully
one third of them losing it.

The time
went by so quickly that you completely forgot half the things
you planned on trying. A couple of us were doing low gravity
judo throws, and I took a shot at the worlds first flying
armbar in zero gravity (didn't work out too well). Most of
us that were doing fairly aggressive bouncing around landed
on our heads at least once, so I have some concern that they
will eventually have someone test the liability waiver.

The bottom
line is that I highly recommend the experience, and I am almost
certainly going to do it again at some point. Peter said most
of their bookings are for corporate incentive programs, which
is probably the most fun way to do it, but grabbing a friend
and getting tickets for one of the passenger flights that
will be starting soon out of Florida would still be memorable.
The current individual price is $3k.

The take
home lesson is that we need to add a lot of cabin volume to
our first consumer suborbital spacecraft. Adding an extra
63" by 12' of cabin volume will only cost us about 250 pounds.
You won't get much more total zero-g than on the parabolas,
but it will be contiguous, and combined with the view, the
boost burn, the reentry acceleration, and the exclusivity,
I do think it is going to be a ride worth $100k. Zero-G is
almost certain to stir up a lot of excitement about manned
space flight in general.

We'll
have more pictures and video in the regularly scheduled Armadillo
update this weekend, but here are a couple:

Tuesday
September 21, 2004: 7-8:15pm Pacific Time - the Space Show
"features JMatt Bille and Erika Lishock discussing their
book "The First Space Race," a ground-breaking study of the
contest to launch the world's first satellite..."

Wednesday
Sept. 22, 2004, 7-8:15 PM Pacific TIme Special Space Show
"features Brian Feeney, Team leader for the da
Vinci Project, live from Toronto, Canada. Mr. Feeney will
be discussing the da Vinci Project “go” for the X-Prize which
is currently planned for Oct. 2, 2004..."

Sunday
Sept. 26, 2004: 12:00-1:30pm Pacific TIme - "features
Richard Westfall, President and Research Director of Galactic
Mining Industries, Inc. He founded Galactic Mining Industries,
Inc. in 1989 and the company has operated as a think tank
for the last 15 years, dedicated to developing the technical
and legal foundations of space colonization. The focus of
Galactic Mining has been the mining of asteroids and the building
of space stations...."

More
science... Rand also points out that I was being
overly glib in my science
note on weightlessness in orbit when I spoke of an
orbit as occurring when "the curve of your falling trajectory
matches the curve of the earth."

As he points
out, and as Kepler did a few centuries ago, a spacecraft in
orbit actually follows the path of an ellipse,
with the center of mass of the earth at one of the foci of the
ellipse. I'll note that since
the earth is very massive relative to a spacecraft, you can
arrange for an orbit that is pretty close to circular with respect
to the earth's center.

Run this
fun
applet to shoot a cannonball around the earth. See also
the list
of more orbital simulation applets.

...This
looks to be a promising resource for resourceful hobbyists of
all sorts: Make
Magazine

September.18.2004Space News

Zero-G
and your stomach...
Many of the articles about the new publicly available Zero-G
flights focus on the possibility of motion sickness. After
all, the astronauts didn't dub their parabolic flyer the Vomit
Comet for nothing.

However,
it should be pointed out that the company has tried to minimize
the possibility in several
ways:

Fewer
parabolas - the NASA plane flew up to 60 parabolas at a time.
Motion sickness was more common after 20 or so. ZERO-G flights
do 15.

Gradual
reduction - the first few parabolas produce Mars-like 1/3
Earth gravity, then Moon-like 1/6 g, and then zero.

They
intersperse "a few minutes of straight and level flight"
occasionally into the trip.

Coaching
is given on how to avoid getting sick, e.g. urging people
to focus on a fixed point during the high-g valleys
of the flight.

Science
note...The "zero
g" effect produced by these flights, just like in orbit,
is an apparent one. Earth's gravitational pull doesn't
change and remains as strong as ever. (It decreases as 1/(distance
squared) as you move away from the planet.)

Over the
top of the parabola, both you and the plane are falling together.
You are no longer being pressed against the floor of the plane,
which is usually keeping you at a fixed distance from the earth
via the lift of its wings. (In the valleys of the trajectory,
the plane is having to decelerate and reverse you from the speed
gained during the falling portion of the parabola. So you feel
higher g force in that case.)

In orbit,
the same principle applies except you and the vehicle are falling
around the earth because your rocket produced enough
horizontal speed to keep you from hitting the ground as you
fall. That is, the curve of your falling trajectory matches
the curve of the earth.

Space
arts report....
Here are some miscellaneous space art and music related links...

...
During May-June 2005, the
World Space Culture in London will encompass an international
conference, exhibitions and performances with the goal of celebrating
"the diversity of attitudes and approaches to space exploration
across cultures."...

Wasting
money on libraries...
In response to my recent
entry on NASA's failure to archive properly its technology
development, a reader responded with a story from his days in
Huntsville,
Alabama while working with a major aerospace company on the
space station program:

"The
NASA Inspector General's office sent staff to audit the company.
The result was a citation under the waste, fraud, and abuse
category for having documents in the company library that
were more than 5 years old. They decided it was a waste of
taxpayers' money. Of course, the engineers took the 'offending'
documents and stored them at their desks.

Aren't
you glad that we are paying government watchdogs to make sure
that evil, profit making corporations don't waste taxpayers'
money?"

I'll also
note that Gene Meyers says in a recent interview
on the Space Show that many of the Space Shuttle development
records have not been saved.

Tuesday
Sept 14, 2004: 7-8:15pm Pacific Time - The Space Show "features
returning guest Robert Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman is an award
winning science writer, space historian, and author of the
new best selling book, “LEAVING EARTH: Space Stations, Rival
Superpower, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel.” As an
award-winning author, writing articles and books on issues
of science, history, technology, and culture, his work is
published regularly in such magazines as Astronomy, The Sciences,
The Wall Street Journal,..."

Thursday,
September 16, 2004, 5-6:30 PM - "Special Live Taping
of The Space Show features Professor Michael Duke, Director
of the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in
Space at the Colorado School of Mines, a NASA Space Commercialization
Center. Dr. Duke has 40 years in space science and lunar exploration.
He has worked at Johnson Space Center for 25 years as Lunar
Sample Curator, ..."

Sunday
Sept. 19, 2004: 12:00-1:30pm Pacific TIme - Space Show "features
Taylor Dinerman, space writer regarding military and civilian
space activities since 1983. From 1999 until 2003, Mr. Dinerman
ran Space Equity.com. Taylor Dinerman has now been writing
for a variety of publications including Ad Astra, The Wall
Street Journal and the American Spectator..."

Space
book auction...Richard
H. Jackson, former owner of Missile,
Space, and Rocket Used Books, is selling on September 23,
2004 his personal collection of over 6000 space related books
including science fiction, novels, children space books, brochures,
pamphlets, Martin Caidin books and manuscripts, plus other miscellaneous
books. Mr. Dale Sorenson has finished the catalog and it is
posted in its entirety on Waverly
Auction. To receive a printed copy of the catalog send your
snail mail address to: info@waverlyauctions.com

September.12.2004Space News

Spinning
off better beds ... I'm not one to hold direct spinoffs
as a primary reason to support space development. (It's worth
doing for its own sake.) Many products that are famous as spinoffs,
such as Teflon, were not in fact developed by space research.

Sunday
Sept. 12, 2004: 12:00-1:30pm Pacific TIme - The Space Show
"features returning guest, Professor Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz,
a space law specialist from the University of Mississippi
Space Law Center. Prof. Gabrynowicz is the Director of the
National Remote Sensing and Space Law Center and is the Editor-in-Chief
of the Journal of Space Law. She has taught space law and
policy since 1987 and remote sensing law and policy since
1990..."

From the
archive you can hear Jim Muncy, head of PoliSpace, talk about
space legislation in an interview
on the Space
Show recorded last Tuesday.

September.9.2004Space News

Comsat
comeback...
People buying those Hi-Definition TVs want something to watch
and the satellite broadcasters aim to supply them: DirecTV
to buy three Boeing satellites - spacetoday.net - Sept.8.04.
The recession in the communication satellite industry that began
around 2000 may be coming to an end. While a boom in new satellites
is unlikely, it looks like there will be a stable demand for
several years.

Despite
claims that satellites would inevitably lose to high bandwidth
cable, the opposite is happening. DTH is growing strongly while
cable actually lost subscribers this year. Meanwhile, satellite
radio is also growing rapidly.

...
Rand
Simberg lays out clearly the reasons why it currently costs
so much to go to space, why this high cost is not due to any
fundamental laws of physics or economics, and how the costs
can be brought down significantly: The
Path Not Taken - The New Atlantis - Sept.04...

Planet
search... The Dopplar
method to finding planets circling other stars works best
with big planets and those that orbit close to the star (i.e.
those with fast orbital periods). The latest announcement of
the discovery of Neptune-sized planets indicate the technique
is improving and lowering the mass range that it can detect.
Astronomers
discover small exoplanets - spacetoday.net - Sept.1.04.

Nevertheless,
finding earth sized planets in earth type orbits will require
far more sensitive techniques. These include Transit
Photometry (monitoring the reduction in light as a planet
crosses in front of star) and interferometry.